Match Point

SPOILER ALERT: THIS BLOG PRETTY MUCH GIVES AWAY LOTS OF STUFF ABOUT A MOVIE.

In sports, the stars get the calls. Good pitchers get the outside corner. When Atlanta had three future Hall of Famers in its rotation -- Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz -- they got strike calls six inches outside so often, people started calling it an "Atlanta strike." In the NBA, if you're within two feet of Kobe Bryant when he shoots -- no matter into what pretzelesque shape he has concorted himself to get off a shot in a blatant attempt to get a foul call -- the foul's on you. Kevin Garnett has never been called for a moving screen in his life and also has never set a legal screen in his life. The NFL has lots and lots of rules whose single intent to prevent defenders from killing quarterbacks. Figure skaters from former Soviet republics get the best scores even when they flail around like mimes on crack.

The same things goes for movie reviews, at least some times. I'll give you an example.

The Muse and I watched Woody Allen's newer movie Match Point a few nights ago. I had been really interested in seeing this movie. I like a lot of Woody Allen movies, but hadn't been interested in very many recent ones before Match Point. Basically, Allen spent about 10 years starring in movies where he was the romantic lead opposite people like Mira Sorvino and Helen Hunt. Yuck. He apparently had to try to prove that it was OK for him to have married his step-daughter by showing that, hey, people will watch me in movies doing basically the same thing. It came off as deranged and gross. Woody's lucky that law enforcement didn't get involved.

Well, at some point, someone apparently gave him the hit over the head with the 2"x4" that he needed, so he made Match Point. He didn't appear in it. It was a drama and not some goofy comedy. It got really good reviews. And, you know, Scarlett Johansson is OK looking. So I was pretty interested in seeing the movie.

And you know what? It was barely OK. I kept waiting for something unexpected to happen. Nothing ever did. I kind of wonder if Woody was going for a Greek tragedy/kabuki theater kind of thing by telling a story where everyone knew what was going to happen. The Muse pointed out that the main character was a cypher. Was he supposed to be an unexplainable phemonenon like Iago or an empty vessel that is supposed to represent something that everyone could become? Who knows? Scarlett Johansson was largely wasted, although she had one scene where she flew off the handle and went all crazy that was pretty good. So, when the cypher guy extramaritally knocked her up and then killed her in order to hold on to the super-wealthy lifesftyle into which he had married, you both saw it coming from about a mile away and weren't too shook up about it.

Which made me wonder, why did all of these critics pee themselves over this movie? The only thing I can think of is that the critics, who probably are almost all great lovers of Woody Allen movies, were so happy that he had stopped trying to play himself off as the romantic interest of actresses who are 75 years younger than him that they just went so crazy. Basically, Woody got, in the parlance of figure skating, propped up. He got marks that he shouldn't have gotten. They didn't call him for traveling even though he took three steps.

Match Point: Movie minus